The politics of Afghanistan

The Bush Administration knows what it wants from Afghanistan: democratic elections and Osama bin Laden's scalp, in any order, but before the US presidential elections in November.

The inevitable postponement this week of Afghanistan's presidential and parliamentary elections can only diminish the Bush camp's hopes of using progress in Afghanistan to divert attention from the quagmire in Iraq. In January this year, to the UN's dismay, Afghanistan's interim President, Hamid Karzai, brought the elections forward to June, reportedly under pressure from Washington. Mr Karzai's decision to reschedule the polls for September keeps alive the possibility that Mr Bush may still get a democratic exercise of sorts. Afghanistan, however, remains woefully ill prepared for its first free election in over four decades. It has much to lose if the groundwork is not properly, and patiently, laid.

Only about 1 million of an estimated 10.5 million Afghan voters are registered, largely because escalating violence is hampering UN teams. Mr Karzai's government exerts effective authority over little more than the capital. Insurgents, including remnants of al-Qaeda and the Taliban, are terrorising the south and east, targeting Afghan and foreign aid workers, demining personnel and reconstruction contractors and warning Islamic mullahs against co-operating with voter registration teams. Since the US-led invasion of 2001, opium production, which had virtually halted under the fundamentalist Taliban, has soared. Drug money, worth about $US2.2 billion ($2.9 billion) last year, is flowing back into the violent worlds of war lords and terrorists.

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Yet the US and the international community are apparently trying to rebuild and secure Afghanistan on the cheap. Compared with operations in Bosnia, for example - with 18.6 peacekeepers for 1000 people and $US1390 in foreign aid a head over the first two years - Afghanistan is limping along. Over the same period, peacekeeepers and US troops combined in Afghanistan were less than 1 for 1000, and foreign aid totalled $US52 a head.

A freely elected government in Kabul is clearly desirable. But elections cannot break the cycle of war and terrorism unless there is a reasonable prospect that voting can proceed safely and that a new, unified government can secure the nation. The UN is right to warn that this is a difficult, long-term process. It should not be linked to US domestic politics. Washington has pushed its own agenda in Afghanistan in the past, arming Islamic jihadi factions to fight Soviet occupying troops in the 1980s. Civil war ensued and the Taliban and al-Qaeda emerged from the chaos.

With insufficient time, troops and funds, the rebuilding of Afghanistan could fail, with tragic results. International donors meeting in Germany this week must recognise this risk when they consider Mr Karzai's plea for $US27.5 billion over seven years. For Australia, Afghanistan's precarious situation has its own new political edge. The ALP may have won limited public support for its plan to bring troops home from Iraq for Christmas. However, Labor's assertion that the front line of the "war on terrorism" lies in Afghanistan has drawn appropriate attention to the unfinished Afghan war.

Cleaning up gaming's image

If bureaucrats are intent on manipulating history, they should take a leaf from George Orwell's expositions of totalitarian states bullying and confounding muddled populations by insisting black really is white. Sometimes, of course, it works, even in societies that cherish free thought. But success usually relies on the deceit complying with pre-existing bias and prejudice. Tweaking a Powerhouse Museum exhibition on the history of Australian gambling was always a no-brainer, and not just because ham-fisted censorship and manipulation were bound to come to public notice.

One would have to have lived under a mushroom to be fooled into thinking that betting on games of chance has not wreaked mayhem on that minority of punters whose losses provide a massively disproportionate share of gambling operators' profits. Thanks to a Productivity Commission investigation and the activism of those whose opposition is fired more by the economic hardship of gambling's downsides than by bald wowserism, the message has been amplified. Addictive punting has been ruinous to the 2 per cent of the population betting 25 per cent of poker machine stakes and incurring 40 per cent of losses.

And, yet, the Department of Racing and Gaming saw fit to lock the gates after the horse had bolted. At least some of the nasties should be withheld from the Thrills, Spills and Social Ills exhibit, the department decided. This was done even though the exhibit is sponsored by a $500,000 contribution from the Casino Community Benefit Fund, specifically established by a levy on Star City Casino to alleviate problem gambling. The exhibit sponsor's charter would be served only if gambling's history was told warts and all. But editing by departmental bureaucrats of the curators' draft essentially sanitised gambling's history. And for what? Presumably, the department charged with regulating gaming is a tad squeamish at the revelation of the industry's darker side. Equally, the censorship exercise illustrates a reluctance to acknowledge the worst-kept budget secret: that government is addicted to gambling taxes to shore up its coffers.

That is a political issue that can be debated sensibly and rigorously only if the public is appraised of reality. As an assertion, it is a statement of the bleeding obvious. It is not for bureaucrats to second-guess the political wishes of ministerial masters by seeking to rewrite history or, indeed, by diverting institutions of learning (such as museums) from their pursuit of knowledge.